


That Big Black Cloud

by trailingviolets



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist Grantaire, Dark Grantaire, Drunk Grantaire, Enjolras Has Feelings, Enjolras/Grantaire-centric, Eventual Enjolras/Grantaire, Grantaire Angst, M/M, Oblivious Enjolras, Pining Grantaire, all these suggested tags, poli sci! Enj because I can, they do fit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 07:18:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7705579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trailingviolets/pseuds/trailingviolets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire gets drunk and has a roaring vision. Enjolras walks past the right alley and rescues him. </p><p>Final chapter coming soon!</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Big Black Cloud

Shortly before Grantaire passes out, he entertains a vision of heaven in the form of his Apollo.

Not that this is an irregular occurrence, hardly. He feels most at home with his head buried between clinking bottles, angling his eyes up to the Musain’s soapbox so that he might watch Enjolras speak without dizzying his head.

After months of the same, Enjolras gets wise to the gesture, turning his gaze on Grantaire with a meaningful frown.

“If you’re drunk, you can leave us,” he hisses, low and cold.

While he expresses the care to at least be discreet, it still shakes something deep in Grantaire, making his stomach turn hard. It’s a few feet from the door of the Cafe that he finds himself bent forward on both knees, choking up bile and clotted drink, the swallows of water he took to hasten things along.

Truth be told, drunk is the only way to bear these Amis meetings. Between Enjolras’s minutely patterned shirt, his manilla folders and bookmarked programs, his waif’s hair, it’s almost painful. It hurts right at the center of the numbness in his chest, a place he never expected to never feel from again. It makes him pathetic, wanting Enjolras even in the knowledge that he is unable to love, to truly regrow.

Grantaire gave up on healing long ago, and is active in seeking the next best option, which is to forget.

Not that what’s before him is an extraordinary vision. It’s the sort of half-dream that preludes the main event. The brain cooling to its own subconscious, resting. That’s how Grantaire imagines his head: better on autopilot with shuttered eyes. Better to be in some facsimile of peaceful acceptance than to live only to fuck up.

It's also how Grantaire imagines he’ll go out, one day. Quick and silent in his sleep after a night of wine and shots. It becomes his favorite daydream, lying motionless in bed and watching the sun creep over the ceiling. Watching it pour over him, and feeling nothing.

Grantaire finds relief in the fact that nothing, and the belief in nothing, is securable indefinitely.

It’s just this once that he imagines himself powerless to move, in the filthy alley behind the Musain, mouth bitter, throat crackling. Grantaire feels a telling warmth between his legs, watches the world shift each time he flutters his eyes. In this dream, he’s too alive, too full of the cold, rather than the pleasant nothingness that always sends him to sleep.

Then, as if summoned by sheer will, Apollo appears from around the corner, adding a new depth of light to his made-up world. If someone were to ask Grantaire what he believed in, it would cease to be nothing, the closer he got to Enjolras. For he believes in the ache cemented over his eyes on long nights, and the work his Apollo does to make the world less ugly.

He believes in Enjolras out of adoration, blindly, and with no other principle. Grantaire can hardly help himself.

“What is this here?” Enjolras asks, his voice rapid, harsh. Unable to respond, Grantaire lets his head loll to the side, to try and peer harder at his Apollo. In sleep, there’s no point in telling himself not to stare.

Enjolras casts a glowering look down at him, making Grantaire smile. Even though he’s behaved badly and made a fool of himself, he’s earned Enjolras’s attention. There’s little Grantaire loves more than to be noticed. In the second before he’s rebuked, it’s comforting to be close, to smell Enjolras’s pine cologne.

“R?” Enjolras snaps, and Grantaire is jarred, open-eyed, to try and speak.

“Mm fine, Apollo. Good dream,“ he manages, voice catching. It is good, he knows, and so vivid. Not a normal dream, but a vision of grace.

“A vision of _what_? Can you hear me?” He nods up at Apollo, who looks as if he’s about to stand up and walk away. Grantaire puts out a hand to still him, landing spit-slick fingers on Enjolras’s overcoat.

“Don’t go. Can’t move, can’t breathe. Don’t go,” he gasps, chanting it like a child. He feels helpless, so alone. Shivering among bags of trash. It’s only Enjolras keeping this from turning into a nightmare.

Something in Apollo’s face softens, and he studies Grantaire anew. “I can’t leave you here, that’s for sure. Care to tell Combeferre what you’ve had to drink?”

Grantaire grasps at a memory that doesn’t come. The night is blank, and suddenly he can’t remember how he got here, except by the experience of so many other nights.

“Wine and vodka, whiskey, bourbon, beer. Half a glass of water.”

“Did you eat anything today, R?” He thinks for a while, then shakes his head.

“Food makes me sick.”

Enjolras sighs and leans closer. He’s kneeling next to him, eyes focusing on his, expression attentive. Almost as if he’s an interesting point articulated in a political tract. Grantaire shuts his eyes, lets his fingers slip from the coat. He’s gotten what he wanted. He can sleep in darkness, now.

As he drifts off, Apollo’s voice resonates from increasingly further away. Eventually, it’s so distant he wants to wave it goodbye.

Grantaire wants to wave his whole life goodbye.

~~~~

Grantaire wakes sprawled on a cluster of cushions, facing a stark window. Immediately, the sun burns his eyes, causes him to blink back tears that fall into his hair.

“You’re alive,” a voice says.

“Against my best efforts,” he returns, and attempts to stand.

“Sit down.You’re concussed.” Of course, Grantaire thinks, doing his best not to throw up all over the floor. Obediently, his body folds back onto the cushions, chagrined.

“What time is it?”

“Three o’clock in the afternoon.”

“Middle of the night,” Grantaire remarks, and he hears the man scoff in reply. A man who’s sounding suspiciously more and more like Enjolras.

“I’m going to pour you a glass of water, and once you drink it, you’re free to stand up. Combeferre’s orders.” Grantaire nods, and waits for Apollo to bring it to him.

It must be another cruel fantasy, because the water Enjolras puts in his hand feels cool through the glass, and his fingers wrap around Grantaire’s, guiding the drink to his lips. He nearly chokes, but finally manages to swallow, throat burning. After the moment it takes to recover, he finishes the glass in two strokes. It’s then that he ventures to open his eyes again.

Enjolras is staring at him, looking tired and pissed, but achingly beautiful in the hot sunlight from the window. He’s wearing sweatpants and a red shirt, and Grantaire notices himself for the first time. How filthy he is, and how last night must have been real, not a dream.

“Oh god, I am so sorry,” he starts, turning away.

“You realize you nearly threw away your life, last night?” Enjolras doesn’t sound nearly as mad as he looks, just unbearably exhausted, and heavy, somehow. Grantaire forces himself to look him in the eyes and nod.

“Yeah, I truly thought I was dying.” He smiles ruefully, remembering how much he longed to kiss Enjolras with his wine-filthy lips, to part with a gift, and how glad he is to have blacked out instead.

“This isn’t a joke,” Enjolras spits, which only serves to amuse Grantaire more. Enjolras scowls at the wall.

“I can’t help it, I’m still a little woozy. I’m sorry, Enjolras.” He falls head first into guilt, suddenly more serious. “I can’t imagine the trouble I put you through, you should’ve just left me there.”

“You asked me not to,” Enjolras says lowly, and Grantaire frowns. He knows it’s possible, as Grantaire begs him perpetually in his dreams not to go, not to leave him alone. If he’s aware of blushing, it’s only because he’s thinking of what might have been said.

“I was drunk! You could’ve left me for the next random do-gooder,” he diverts, “I’m sure there are more people out on a Saturday night than you and Combeferre.”

“Leave you collapsed in the trash, unconscious, so that _someone else can find you_?” Enjolras eyes him incredulously, fuming so hard his nostrils flare. “You have a death wish.”

“You and me both, Apollo.” Enjolras tosses his head, dismissive.

“The revolution is a new beginning, not a pauper’s end,” he answers.

“Would it really bother you so much, if I were to just...disappear?” Grantaire mutters, feeling instantly rawer, asking for validation like this, against the currency of his own death. As if he could sink any lower.

“As a matter of fact, it would bother me. Do you think I enjoy the thought of you freezing to death because I kicked you out of a meeting?”

“I goaded you into kicking me out. It wasn’t even that cold.”

“It was seven degrees. Fahrenheit, R.” Grantaire nearly chuckles, in spite of himself.

“See that’s why you should take up drinking. I didn’t feel a thing.” Enjolras pulls away from him and stands, scrubbing his face over with a hand.

“Do you need to be watched like you’re four? Because it would be my pleasure to ride your ass.” Grantaire’s mind darts elsewhere, only returning to Enjolras’s look of unimpressed disgust. “It’s Combeferre’s phrase, not mine, I know it’s vile. He told me quite explicitly that he considers you a lost cause. Somehow I’m not inclined to agree.”

“You aren’t?” Grantaire can only formulate one conclusion: it’s out of the kindness of Enjolras’s heart that he shelters him from the truth.

“Your entire existence is a cry for help, on that we both concur,” Enjolras hesitates, looking lost. “But I think with enough time, you could improve.”

“Me, improve?” Grantaire half expects Enjolras to take it back as a joke.

“If you sobered up. It’s an experimental theory, of sorts.” Grantaire’s head aches, with no idea as to where the conversation has gone. It’s news to him that any of this is remotely salvageable.

“An ‘experimental theory’, that’s haute. Are you planning to test it out?” he jests.

Enjolras’s expression crinkles, and Grantaire winces at the tone of his own words.

“Actually, yes.” Enjolras pauses, clearing his throat. “With your consent.”

~~~

Past the initial shock of Enjolras’s proposition, Grantaire spies the profit in it. If there’s a convert between them, it’s naturally Grantaire. In which case the revolution is still valid. If someone as grim as he can change, then the people of France can and will turn their support towards Patria.

Whether Apollo’s offering a chance at a better life or just a chance to be useful is immediately uncertain, but he agrees.

“I think you just want attention,” Enjolras says simply.

“I wouldn’t put it past me,” Grantaire answers evenly.

~~~

“So what do you want me to do, anyways?” Grantaire asks. He’s changed out of his soiled clothes and into sweats and a t-shirt, much the same as the outfit Enjolras wears. The clothes smell of Enjolras’s body, so much so that it took him three panicked minutes to get his dick back down to half-hard in the bathroom.

“I want you to stop doing stupid shit, for starters.”

“Sounds tedious.”

Enjolras sighs, shifting in his seat. Grantaire is sitting at the very edge of the couch, trying not to command space. He wants only to be left to nurse himself in peace, ideally with a glass of wine. Wine is cheap, and it goes down sweet.

“I wish you took me seriously,” Enjolras laments, and Grantaire finds it strange how much emotion he manages to pack into such a sentence.

“I take you very seriously. Myself, not so much.”

“I believe you are capable of not being such a reckless ass. That should qualify this conversation as something to be taken seriously. By your criteria,” he adds.

“You have my word, I’ll try,” Grantaire answers, sounding more vulnerable than he means to, and Enjolras’s expression clears.

"Then it’s settled,” Enjolras answers, voice soft. Grantaire flushes warm with pleasure at the sound of Enjolras’s trust, his hope that there is a future beyond tomorrow.

“See,” Enjolras whispers, “Positive attention.”

~~~

Positive attention turns out to be tricky for Grantaire. Once he has an iota of it from Enjolras, he wants more. His skin burns with it, the desire to be noticed, to be wanted, even for a purpose as trivial as the proving of a point. Grantaire feels immediately lighter, and that makes him sharper, but it also sharpens the pain. Of Enjolras being right in front of him, and still untouchable.

~~~

“What’d you have for breakfast?” Enjolras quizzes him, hovering over his cup with the French press.

“Whatever will make you pour me some coffee, already,” Grantaire mouths back, and Enjolras sighs, capitulating.

“Do you need cream and sugar?”

“No way.”

“Should’ve known, it goes with your black heart,” Enjolras remarks, and while Grantaire would hasten to agree, he can’t help the look of distress that crosses his face.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Enjolras says when he looks up.

“No, you’re fine. I didn’t eat breakfast. _I’m sorry_.” Grantaire’s face burns, and he aches to be better magically, if only for wishing to be. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way.

“That’s all you had to say,” Enjolras answers, impossibly gentle, as he sets an empty plate in front of Grantaire.

“What’s this?” he asks.

“I’m not about to let you go hungry. You’ll eat pancakes, right?”

~~~

Truth is, doughy as Grantaire looks, he’s starving. Often there are only coins to spend on supper, and what’s left over from rent he allocates towards drink. Grantaire can’t remember the last time someone cooked for him, while he sat at a kitchen table and sipped coffee. It seems almost too normal to be his life.

All of Enjolras’s attempts at conversation fall by the wayside, mostly because Grantaire lacks the skills to communicate sober. He’s big on two word answers, like _fine, whatever_ or _yeah, sure_. The old habit of provoking Enjolras flares up worse when he’s nervous, which is every second he spends in the leader’s upscale apartment.

It’s just as you’d expect, sunny and perfectly arranged, but inexplicably hollow.

~~~

Grantaire is on the sofa drawing when he catches Enjolras’s voice on the phone, and arbitrarily starts to listen. Enjolras speaks in a whisper, but Grantaire hears his name laced into the dialogue. It’s too cold to think of taking a call outside, so possibly the conversation is innocuous, but private. Or it could be that Enjolras is choosing to diss him within earshot.

Grantaire dashes a summary of his face into the corner of the portrait he was working on of Enjolras, labeling it ‘... _and the trash_ ’ in his scrawling cursive. He lets the sketchbook rest in his hands, open. As he strains to hear more, he distinctly catches at a sentence, then another.

“No, ‘Ferre, listen. He’s destitute. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. He has nothing.” Grantaire feels himself wince, but knows it’s only true. Grantaire hoped it wasn’t so painfully obvious, but Enjolras is too smart to fall for anything, anyways. Better he knows, and doesn’t expect miracles.

“He’s just afraid. That’s all it is, insecurity. Apart from that, he’s so kind, I can’t tell you.” All he did was offer to draw Enjolras a portrait, for his business cards. Grantaire hasn’t even been able to produce one that he’s happy with, yet. After so long spent admiring Enjolras, everything he inks comes out looking like a boudoir photograph.

“He’s extraordinary, really.”

Grantaire has no right to be as elated as he is by the praise. It takes him by surprise, lighting his eyes. He glances at himself in Enjolras’s computer screen and doesn’t recognize the expression on his face.

A few minutes later, Enjolras sinks down beside him on the couch. Before he even turns in Grantaire’s direction, he manages to note, “You seem pleased.” Grantaire must turn a darker shade of red, because Enjolras instantly backs off. “That was Combeferre.”

“How’s your thesis coming along?” Grantaire asks, as lightly as possible.

“It’s looking like a success. Hell, they might name a university after me.”

“Try the dining commons.”

“Of a community college,” Enjolras snorts, and Grantaire gives himself ten seconds to laugh before he stands up, making to leave.

“No, don’t go,” Enjolras says absently, and it makes something catch in Grantaire’s chest to hear it in that tone, from Apollo.

“I’ve bothered you enough. It’s time for you to study and me to drink my travails away.” Enjolras furrows his brow, as vehemently as possible. It looks ridiculously attractive.

“I like it when you draw here. Stay. Have dinner. I can spread my work out on the floor. If you go drinking, you will be breaking your accord with me.” Enjolras grins unblinkingly as Grantaire returns to the couch without hesitation, bested.

“Happy?” he grits out at Enjolras. His mind floats between pleasure and desperation, the sinking desire to prove himself, and the aching notion that he’ll never.

“I’m elated,” Enjolras returns, smooth and unaware. Grantaire reopens his sketchbook, and reclaims his muse’s face in the faded light from the window. It’s not self-satisfied, nor cocky. Rather it’s Enjolras in repose, lightly paging through a comparative manual.

When he’s done, Grantaire hands the paper over for inspection, confident it contains nothing of the infatuation he still manages to hide, for the most part. If Enjolras is threaded by golden light, that’s just how it happened.

Enjolras’s face goes opaque, and he responds with a slow smile, before walking the drawing to the furthest wall, the one that faces them, white and bare.

“What are you doing?” Grantaire asks.

“I’m hanging this up. I’ve never been so beautiful,” Enjolras says, and hidden safe behind his back, Grantaire goes ice cold, rigid.

After dinner Enjolras showers, and Grantaire is left to stare at the lonely wall separating them. His approximation of Apollo seems closer to reality than the man himself, because like Grantaire the drawing’s crooked, and as yet unrequited.

~~~

“How did you sleep through three alarms?” Enjolras demands, seething over Grantaire’s speakerphone.

“I guess it was a four alarm dream,” he groggily answers, knowing this bodes badly for the rest of the morning.

“It better have been worth it. You were due at my apartment forty minutes ago.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Grantaire says, regretting it immediately when Enjolras’s tone darkens.

“I have your best interests at heart,” he mutters, by way of apology. 

~~~

Later on, they drink coffee and discuss the new labor platform, Grantaire shooting down every opinion Enjolras gives. Instead of blackening each other’s moods, somehow it turns into a game of keep-away, with Enjolras consistently stalemating Grantaire’s criticism.

As he’s gathering up his notes from the table, Enjolras says, “Thank you, I needed that.”

“You’re welcome,” is Grantaire’s response, rapidly moving away to hide his surprised flush.

~~~

Grantaire has so disparaged of himself that it’s nearly impossible to actively desire anyone without feeling vaguely guilty. It takes extraordinary circumstances to override the epic hopelessness that goes along with Grantaire’s pining for his Apollo.

The fact that Enjolras is drunk circumvents this entirely. Grantaire stares agape from the stoop as Apollo welcomes him inside with a grand sweeping gesture, banging his hand on the door. He’s clearly impervious to any resulting pain, and continues grinning.

“Come in! Do you need an introduction to your own home?”

“I don’t live here,” Grantaire corrects gently, taking off his boots in the entryway.

“You might as well, you’re here so often,” Enjolras amends, swaying close. “I always wanted a roommate.”

“You really are quite drunk,” comments Grantaire, at a loss as to what else he can safely say. It’s a beautiful relief to see him like this, a little less perfect, but also sad, that it’s under these conditions that Grantaire most deserves affection. When his muse is mussed-lipped and generous, unaware of himself. Somehow Grantaire gets the feeling that it will all come back on him in the morning.

Still, he can’t help but suggest more wine.

“Wine? Cosette was drinking Patron! And she said to drink it with her or I had to go home.”

“Smart strategy,” Grantaire remarks, finding them matching stemware from the topmost cabinet. As he stretches to reach, Grantaire is momentarily conscious of Enjolras’s eyes on him. Just as quick as his own pointed glances, and then gone. He pulls his shirt down and grimaces.

“Drink this,” he instructs Enjolras.

“It’s not bad at all,” Enjolras giggles.

“That’s because it’s water, Apollo.”

“What, no wine?” pouts Enjolras. Grantaire thinks this must be the most ridiculous role reversal since chopped bread, and can only smile at himself playing the role of the sober friend.

“Gotta give me a chance to catch up,” Grantaire jokes, strangely at home in this new truth. That he is capable of taking care of Enjolras as much as Enjolras is capable of reforming him.

“Okay,” says Enjolras, and they clink glasses, one shining port-red, the other dull, transparent. When he has properly drained his water, Grantaire does pour Enjolras a half-glass of wine, looking only to please.

It must delight Enjolras, for he leans in closer, and whispers, “So good.”

“Me?” Grantaire asks incredulously.

“You. So good to me.”

“Oh, please,” answers Grantaire softly, fighting against the emotion in him that longs only to kiss, to be, inhabiting the same space as Enjolras, breathing in his shampoo and the fire of his conviction. Even intoxicated, he’s never anything less than glorious.

Momentarily, Grantaire is blindsided by the desire to be able to say the same for himself, and he looks away abruptly, hiding frustrated tears.

“R? You don’t believe me?” Enjolras starts, pulling so desperately at his sweater that Grantaire capitulates, putting on a grin.

“Merely a second of self-reproach, Apollo,” is all Grantaire says.

~~~

They recline against the cushions, watching the sunrise. Miraculously Grantaire has sobered some in the ensuing hours since they finished the wine between them. In contrast, Enjolras is still pleasantly suffused with heat, evident in his neck and face. He’s been on the sweet side of roaring drunk for hours, and good company for Grantaire during the darkness before dawn.

Grantaire watches silent, secreting away this version of Enjolras, listening to the hum of the heating and the fall of footsteps towards the cars outside. He feels that way, engine running to keep warm. Grantaire wants so deeply to kiss his Apollo that it stretches his chest, a pain like he’s dying.

“Maybe that’s the point,” he whispers.

“Point of what?” Enjolras replies blearily.

“I thought that was what adults were supposed to feel, pleasure at being right, but I don’t. I feel glum, and sick of being alive.”

“No, why?” Grantaire turns to him.

“Because there’s nothing for me to have, that I deserve. I want what isn’t for me, and it kills me not to be worthy.” Enjolras makes a pitying noise, and clasps his icy hands to the tops of Grantaire’s, where they rest on his knees in a lotus.

“We’re all just as worthless as we feel, and does it matter? No. Because where there’s something genuine, it’s like a table that can’t be turned. It’s infallible. There's no deserving or un-deserving. It's permitted; it's meant to be.”

“You are never worthless, I can assure you,” is Grantaire's only response.

~~~

“Chinese food?” Enjolras suggests, sometime after dawn. And that’s how Grantaire ends up on the street, hood pulled close to hide his face, holding tight to a menu card drawn over in the shape of a smiley face.

~~~

Of course Enjolras is asleep when he gets back. So Grantaire bundles the takeout away in the fridge, using matching tupperware containers, and collapses on the cushions next to him. Hyper-aware that he smells like tobacco and frying grease, Grantaire winces as Enjolras cracks an eyelid.

“I can go if I stink,” whispers Grantaire.

“Stay, you’re warm,” returns Enjolras, barely louder than a thought. Cautiously, as if moving under water, he leans over to nestle into Grantaire’s chest. Instantly Grantaire is weightless, drugged, hard and electric to the kneecaps. In spite of his miserable life, he leans closer, hopeful, reading Enjolras’s face as he sinks into sleep, grasping at what might yet be said during such a vulnerable exchange.

“Worthy,” his Apollo mutters, then he’s gone, turned out like a light.

~~~

Grantaire wakes with a shudder, and immediately there’s a hot cup of coffee in his hand. “It’s three,” comes Enjolras’s simple greeting.

“Early,” comments Grantaire, sipping gently at the rim of the black Pantone mug that’s come to be his. Anthracite, he reads across the side.

“R?” Enjolras ventures, and he knows almost by rote what’s coming next.

“Last night was a mistake, I get it. I’m sorry, I should’ve left.”

“Left? Am I so selfish, to want you here?”

“What?” Grantaire says, floored.

“I was serious, when I asked you to move in.”

“I’m a drunkard. You called me useless.”

“I called you _uselessly_ infuriating, and I scolded you for making Jehan cry,” Grantaire smiles lightly at the memory. It was the first time Enjolras said his name.

“Again, my apologies.”

“It is what it is. I’ve been coping well enough with you over here every waking moment.” Enjolras looks down, thoughtful, then turns his gaze on Grantaire. It makes him squirm; he hates to think of his heterochromatic eyes, his dirty hair and dire, pinched expression. Only there’s nothing but concern in Enjolras’s eyes, as he raises a hand to brush over Grantaire’s cheek. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Just hungover.”

“So you’ll stay?”

“If you insist,” Grantaire grits out, thick-throated, thrown into relief by the squinting glare of the window. He’s situated so that his drawing is immediately visible over Enjolras’s shoulder, clasped to the wall, at its center. Right there on the floor, something shifts in Grantaire.

He no longer feels like such a criminal when he catches himself watching just a little too closely. Apollo making notes, Apollo eating with chopsticks, Apollo checking the news, Apollo smiling in his direction.

Overall, it’s a good day, with none of the retribution Grantaire imagined.

~~~

What comes next both terrifies and thrills Grantaire. He never expected to be taken in, especially not by Enjolras. With a firm grace, Enjolras tells the Amis that they’re new roommates, neglecting to mention that Grantaire’s crumpled first month’s rent is still sitting on the table.

A week later, he wakes to a note beside it, scrawled simply, “Take the $$$.”

~~~

“What’s that?”

“I said, can we have pasta tonight?!” Enjolras yells from his room.

“Of course. Do you need me to preheat the oven?”

“Why would you preheat the oven?” Enjolras asks, coming out to the doorway with his shirt still half-off.

“Oh, you’re making spaghetti,” he says evenly, “My bad.” Still, Grantaire swallows thickly. The muscles in Enjolras’s back work under his skin, and his lips move into a dismissive smile. It’s a show of control that Grantaire doesn’t leap off the couch and into his arms.

“Sit for me later?” he calls into the dark of the next room.

~~~

Rather than Enjolras acting as a sobering influence, Grantaire has gotten him into the habit of a few glasses of wine. It’s the only proven cure for the glowering frowns he returns from the Amis meetings with, mood frosty, mouth tight.

“Draw me _now_ , R,” Enjolras commands after dinner, and Grantaire hastens for his sketchbook.

“Tilt your head,” Grantaire gestures with his charcoal, once he’s equipped and settled. This has come to be a regular event. It’s almost as if Enjolras is looking to fill the wall with Grantaire’s own mediocre art.

“Can I take my clothes off?” Enjolras whines, stepping closer. Grantaire had no idea he’d gotten him that drunk.

“For the portrait? If it’s your wish,” he tries, tone neutral. His stomach clenches desperately, even before Enjolras can nod, gleeful.

“Finally! I want history to know me,” he explains, and Grantaire nearly laughs out loud.

“That it will, Apollo,” he says, trying to keep the fondness from his voice. 

He’s seen Enjolras shirtless since the dawn of the Amis, but never shivering and without pants in their living room, taking his phone from his pocket before bending and ridding himself of his boxers.

“Am I artistic enough, Pylades?” he jokes, clearly at ease with the whole situation.

“A masterpiece,” Grantaire replies, with not as much sarcasm as would be wise. He feels like the one bared, studiously keeping contact with Enjolras’s face, and not his body.

“Where should I pose?”

“Over by the window. Head back, let your hair fall. That’s good,” Grantaire directs, and Enjolras obeys, giggly and lithe with drink.

“I want to see,” he warns.

“Soon,” Grantaire promises.

~~~


End file.
